


interstates on our palms

by paxlux



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Americana, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxlux/pseuds/paxlux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hasn't let her drive in the last hundred miles, calls her <i>m'lady</i> when he says it, "No, I'm driving."</p>
            </blockquote>





	interstates on our palms

**Author's Note:**

> For the Americana ficathon [here](http://sister-wife.livejournal.com/15920.html). Thus, AU.

He hasn't let her drive in the last hundred miles, calls her _m'lady_ when he says it, "No, I'm driving, last thing we need is you hypnotized by the lines and crashing us into a giant patch of cactuses 'cause it's past your bedtime."

"Cacti," she corrects. "And I drive faster than you. At this rate, we should've stolen horses from that dude ranch, stable boy."

"Not a stable boy," he corrects. The headlights smash through the dark rather than slicing because they're on the run from the hungry red engines of the Lannisters and the headlights don't have time to slice at the speed they're going. 

Gendry curls his hands around the steering wheel, fingers blunt, knuckles scarred and the car pushes a hundred, hundred-and-ten, hundred-and-fifteen, and Arya watches his hands as he drives, wonders how strong he really is. 

She's seen him cut through leather and grab at steel and there's gash on his upper arm, splitting across his thigh where he took a knife meant for her, kneeling where he'd been punched down in the back alley of the laundromat, pulling the fucker of a Lannister thug closer to him so Gendry could spit in his face and kill him with his own blade. 

The stars streak a little at this speed unless she focuses on them, but she's watching Gendry; she shifts through the shadows along the cracked bench seat to his side, fingers finding the wound on his leg and he hisses when she presses.

"Arya," he says, her name lost towards the clean sky in the horizonless desert, wind rushing in where he's rolled his window to let in the dry air. "Arya."

She presses again and he smacks at her hand, but she's quicker than him, capturing his palm in her two smaller ones, her skin lighter against his, even in the dark. 

His pinkie finger's crooked from the last fight they were in, a neon-soaked bar fight in no man's land between the prayer plains of Texas and the storm mountains of New Mexico (all the interstates run free), someone didn't like Gendry's eyes, those weed-grown hicks gone aggressive with bad beer and Arya had to slit a man's chest with a bottle, Gendry at her back with a snapped pool cue, growling through the blue smoke, "C'mon, you fuckers, think you can take on a pair of gutter boys? Do it. _Do it._ "

The desert ignores them as they roar through, the engine the loudest noise out in the long stretches of nothing. 

"Where are we headed?" she asks finally when he gives up and lets her keep his hand, she can feel the raise of the bandages on his leg under her wrist.

"Where would you like to go, m'lady?"

"I _told_ you not to call me that, dolt."

Gendry grins, one side of his mouth going up. "Montana?"

"Lots of nothing in Montana," Arya says, though it doesn't really matter.

"Lots of nothing here."

A sign rising like a ghost, and she sighs, playing with his fingers, the swollen rounds of his knuckles and veins. "Stop at that diner in, what'd it say, eight miles? Do you have the atlas?"

His hand jerks, motioning towards the glove box, candy wrappers and junk food papers spilling from the broken latch. "In there."

"We'll close our eyes and pick a place."

"Do you even know where we are?" he asks and she shoots back, "Do _you?_ "

"Does it matter?"

Lost on the highways of America and no, it doesn't matter. Nothing much does except waking up to Gendry's noisy belching yawns in the morning and his face when they argue about showers and breakfast and how much farther can they run. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west and they have five pairs of stolen sunglasses, three duffle bags, a pack of cards, a roll of quarters, a souvenir plastic dinosaur, and a tank of gas. 

She listens to the revs, the engine rumbling along.

If they don't know where they're going, no one will know either. No one. Not even the gods, wherever they are, even if they're hiding in this silent photograph desert.

"All right, we'll just blindly pick. I need some apple pie and a quick nap," Gendry says, licking his lips. "Apple pie with cheese."

She reaches over, almost knocking the rear view mirror out of whack, and brushes his hair out of his eyes.

"Only if I get bottomless coffee."

"A fucking _terrible_ idea," he groans like he's dying. "You hopped up on caffeine? You know you start fights when you're wired."

"I'll drive. You can sleep. No fights." She smiles, innocent under her flyaway bangs, and he groans again, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, I'll believe that one. When pigs fly."

"Well, look out there, I do believe there is a pig flying."

"It's too dark to see anything. _M'lady._ "

She grabs the wheel and he laughs, the headlights curving with the swerve, and he drives in the oncoming lane, one-handed while she laughs as he clutches at her; she tries to drive away with him, half in his lap, her hands bracketing his on the wheel, the two of them shouting like crazy freed prisoners.

"We could just shack up out here."

"In a lean-to? Eat nothing but beans? Scare off the snakes and scorpions?"

Gendry grins again, full-tilt, lit like Vegas, and they should go there, try their luck. 

"Maybe. As long as you don't take up chewing tobacco and start spitting everywhere," she muses, the two of them dropping off the map into a pile of sand and scrub brush, finding cattle skulls and desert mice, a fence with a no trespassing sign and an abandoned trailer. Well water and spiders on the windowsills and keeping an eye on the skies for rain.

"Maybe." He sounds tired.

The wind whistles through the window, cold when the desert loses the sun, and she ignores the stars to watch the horizon for the shine of the diner lights.


End file.
